Opinion     
Who killed Alexander Litvinenko? Ask Putin

Published on November 29, 2006

Until a week ago, Alexander Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, was virtually unknown outside the murky world of Russian intelligence.

With his death in London from a massive dose of the radioactive element polonium 210, however, his fate may lead to a fundamentally different relationship between Russia and the West.

Beginning with the Yeltsin era, two US administrations have muted criticism of Russia. This was the case even in the face of a series of political murders in Russia. But if Litvinenko, a British subject, was murdered by Russian intelligence on British soil, self-censorship is no longer an option. Unless we want to give the Putin regime carte blanche to dispose of its enemies on our soil, we have no choice but to react.

Russian television has given an explanation for the murder of Litvinenko as surrealistic as any offered by the Soviets during the Cold War. It attributed his death to intrigues in the entourage of the exiled Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky. An announcer on the evening news said Litvinenko was "a pawn in a game whose significance he did not understand". Mr Berezovsky, however, had no reason to kill Litvinenko, whose views he shared and whom he had helped since his arrival in the UK in 2000. In November 1998, Litvinenko revealed a plot to kill Mr Berezovsky who, at the time, was the deputy head of the Russian security council. The evidence points instead to Litvinenko having been murdered by the FSB, which, together with the other "force ministries", has become the dominant political force in Russia today.

The FSB has always had a strong interest in Vladimir Putin's critics abroad. In December 2001, a Russian police official, in announcing a warrant for Mr Berezovsky's arrest, said, "We know what he eats for breakfast, where he has lunch and where he buys his groceries." This was followed up in September 2003 with an unsuccessful attempt to kill Mr Berezovsky with a needle camouflaged as a pen. The British reacted by granting Mr Berezovsky political asylum. Besides a history of tracking Mr Putin's opponents, the FSB could have been encouraged to kill Litvinenko because in June the Russian State Duma passed a law allowing the president to authorise attacks by the FSB on "terrorists" in foreign countries. In fact, the Russian intelligence services do not need a law to attack persons they regard as terrorists abroad. On February 13, 2004, the former Chechen president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was killed and his 12-year-old son seriously injured when a bomb attached by Russian agents ripped apart their SUV. The new law, however, gives a seal of legitimacy to such operations and guarantees that those who carried them out will not be disowned or forgotten in the event of failure.

In the last six years, the make-up of the ruling elite in Russia has undergone a dramatic change. Once in power, Mr Putin filled the majority of important posts with veterans of the security services, many with ties to him dating back to his work in St Petersburg. By 2003, the top ministers, half of the members of the Russian Security Council and 70 per cent of all senior regional officials in Russia were former members of the security services. At the same time, many of these persons gained access to great wealth. Russia was already highly corrupt under Boris Yeltsin but, according to IDEM, an independent Russian think tank, with the rise in oil prices the level of corruption in Russia between 2002 and 2005 increased 900 per cent.

The result of these developments was that Mr Putin created an FSB ruling class. As this class became rooted, the victims of contract killers in Russia began to include the most prominent political figures in the country.

The most sensitive question in Russia is the provenance of the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk, in which 300 died. As a result of the bombings, the second Chechen war was launched and, in his role as wartime leader, Mr Putin, then the PM, achieved enough popularity to be elected president. There is widespread belief the real authors of the bombings were the FSB. Two of the political figures murdered in Russia in recent years were investigating the bombings.

Finally, Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps Russia's best-known journalist, was murdered last month. She travelled to Chechnya regularly despite the risk and was sought out by people from all over the North Caucasus in the hope that she would tell the world about their situation. It used to be said in Russia that no one is killed for politics. Politkovskaya, however, was clearly the victim of a political killing because she wrote only about politics.

Litvinenko resembles the others in this list in all respects except one. He lived in England. His book, "Blowing Up Russia", accused the FSB of the 1999 apartment bombings. He received visitors from Russia, was able to comment knowledgeably on the actions of the FSB in Moscow, and refused to be intimidated. In the wake of Litvinenko's death, the West must insist on cooperation from the FSB in finding his killers. If that is not forthcoming, it should be assumed that the murder of Litvinenko was ordered by the Russian regime.

Under those circumstances, not only should Russia be expelled from the G-8 but the whole structure of mutual consultation and cooperation would need to be re-evaluated. This is not just a matter of refusing to trivialise a murder. It is also a vital political obligation. Russians of all types are watching to see whether the West will simply swallow this crime or finally react to the rampant criminalisation of Russian society. There are forces in Russia that want the country to be part of the West. But to back them, we need to demonstrate that we have moral values that we defend. To do less would be to abandon Russia to the forces of nihilism and obscurantism.

David Satter

Moscow

David Satter is affiliated with the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute and Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book is "Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State" (Yale, 2003)
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